


Between Two Places

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Season Nine Episode Origin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-07
Updated: 2011-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 17:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was too much at stake. That was part of their problem. There had always been too much at stake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Two Places

  
_“Time is the longest distance between two places.”   - Tennessee Williams  
_   



 

The commissary was quiet. The lunch crowd had gone. Meatloaf stocks were depleted and they’d both had to settle for limp-looking salad and the last of the baked potatoes.

Jack toyed with the lettuce and coleslaw dispiritedly. “You know, I had hoped some things might have changed round here since the New Guy took over. New broom et al. Seems I was wrong.” The offending leaf slid slowly from his fork onto his plate.

“ _Some_ things never change,” Daniel said, staring into the depths of his leathery baked potato.

Okay then. Right into it. No time for niceties or to adjust to being  within touching distance again. In the same state. In the same time zone. In love.

Jack clutched his fork tightly. Daniel could take passive-aggression to previously unknown heights when he wanted to.

Jack had wanted to bring him here to talk a little, be together, squirrel away a little time when time was doing nothing but running away from them.

He’d wanted to get Daniel out of his office, where the deep-seated pain in his words had cut Jack to the quick and left him flailing. “I’m hungry,” was the best he could do. He hoped Daniel got it. He thought he did; for “I’m hungry,” read, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

He didn’t want them to snipe and jab and hurt each other.  They had so little time.

“And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same,” Jack said, icily, despite himself and those precious seconds tick, tick, ticking. Jab and parry. They got like this when distance became more than just the miles between them.

This was fucked. Everything was fucked. And Jack was still flailing.

Daniel lay his fork down carefully. Almost too carefully. Right now, Daniel was unpredictable. Maybe not surprising, given the verbal report Jack had just received from Hank.  But tear-filled eyes in his lab?  A reluctant  admission that he was scared?

Fuck.

“Wow. Sounds like the Jack of Vis Uban. Equally glib and just as condescending.”  Daniel rubbed his hands together, sent his shoulders somewhere up round his ears and pursed his lips. Yeah. Whole new heights.

Jack’s grip on the fork tightened so much he felt he could actually snap the metal without too much more effort. “Change doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”  He waited, sure that, with a little patience, Daniel’s gaze would eventually meet his.  Daniel was usually direct when he was pissy. He liked to look Jack in the eye. Make sure he was understood.  Keep him apprised. “And it doesn’t have to be the end of ... anything  ... either,” Jack concluded, his voice dropping. There were ears and eyes everywhere. Even over tasteless lunches that neither could stomach.

Daniel bowed his head, but not before Jack glimpsed a fraction of a second of pain in tired eyes.

Dejected and borderline defeated in his office, now pissy, hurting and angry and verbally lashing out. Daniel’s head was all over the place. Jack couldn’t get a read on him. That scared him more than Daniel’s admission of fear over the Ori threat. And that confession had scared the shit out of him.

 It was too much. Jack let go of the fork, which hit the plate with an unfeasibly loud clatter, drawing curious glances from two guys sipping Cokes two tables across from where Jack and Daniel sat in the corner.

Jack counted to ten, then added another ten, then leaned towards Daniel across the table between them. It might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

“Not here, Daniel. We don’t do this here,” he ground out, voice level, anger barely contained.

Daniel’s head shot up, fierce blue eyes met Jack’s and held. “Then where, Jack? Hmm? When? I take it this is another flying visit, just like the one, what was it, three weeks ago? When you came to sign away the house and car and motorcycle. Was I on that list, too? You’ll have to remind me because I wasn’t lucky enough to catch a glimpse of you as you went about your mission severing ties. I was a little tied up at the beginning of another fucked-up mission.”

Whoa. Okay. Where to start?

“Okay. That’s it. Come with me.” Jack pushed back from the table with rather more force than was necessary, bringing the nearby young officers’ conversation to a halt and making Jack send them his hazel glare of death, famous the galaxy over.

Jack stood, looking down at Daniel, waiting. Waiting him out.

Eventually, Daniel sighed and pushed wearily to his feet. He caught Jack’s eye as he drew level and Jack read so many things there ... frustration, exhaustion, more frustration, with himself and with Jack. With life. The issues were always big with Daniel.

Jack turned and, without checking that Daniel was following, pushed through the commissary doors and stalked off down the corridor. His service dress uniform lent him an extra air of authority, he knew, and he put it to good use on an airman carrying a pile of files who happened to cross his path.

“Airman, tell General Landry that General O’Neill,” he shot Daniel a steely look, “is in conference with Dr. Jackson in isolation quarters here on Level 22.”

The airman glanced between the two men, picked up on the current of tension and rapidly looked at the wall over Jack’s shoulder instead.

“Yes, Sir.” He moved off, only to pull up when Jack added, “And send in coffee and pie.”

“Pie, Sir?”

Jack sighed. “Yes, Airman. Pie.”

“What ... kind of pie, Sir?”

“Pie pie. Any pie. Just as long as it’s pie.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Jack strode quickly past the base mess and kitchen, mentally counting the doors until he reached the iso quarters. He ran his swipe card and ushered Daniel in before him.

The door closed with a harsh click.

The silence inside the room was deafening.

How to play this. How to help Daniel without either of them blowing it. There was too much at stake. That was part of their problem. There had _always_ been too much at stake. They mattered to each other too fucking much.

Jack wandered around the room, lightly touching the back of the two armchairs as he passed. He noted the magazines on the table – an aeronautics journal he used to subscribe to, a National Geographic, and, somewhat incongruously, a bridal magazine. He walked over to the bed, keeping a weather eye on Daniel, who was standing, arms folded, leaning against the wall by the door.

Suddenly bone-numbingly tired, Jack sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.  He ran a hand over his face, felt the tension in his facial muscles. He longed for a nap. Twenty minutes, lying on this bed with Daniel twined around him in the way he did when he was relaxed and happy. When he’d come and given himself to Jack. When he allowed Jack to hold him.

Jack sighed, scrubbed a hand over his head and stood up again, unable to stay still.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked slowly towards Daniel, stopping two feet away.

He couldn’t be angry. He couldn’t snipe and bicker. All too soon, the call would come that the car was waiting to take him to the F-302 and Mitchell and away from the man he loved, and he couldn’t leave with bitterness and pain between them.

He tilted his head, let out a long, ragged breath and said quietly, “Hey.”

Daniel’s eyes, which had been wary and distant, closed, as though he wanted to shut them and his mind to everything that single, familiar word was offering. Then he looked way from Jack and seemed to take a close interest in a crack in the wall, one of those small, spidery fissures that ran off into infinity and, if left untreated, grew into deeper cracks that split and became expensive and sometimes impossible to repair.

Jack followed his gaze and waited. Finally, Daniel’s eyes met his, and this time, they showed only exhaustion and fear and sadness.

The distance between them vanished as they moved towards each other, met half way, the way they always, somehow, did.  Jack’s arms were full of Daniel before he fully realized he’d opened them to him.  Jack pulled him in tight, put a hand on the back of Daniel’s head and let him find his own way into the comfort of Jack’s body. Let him fold into the warmth and security of arms that were always empty without him to hold.

Daniel’s arms went around his waist and he laid his head on Jack’s shoulder in a silent plea for understanding. That he needed this but couldn’t ask for it. Jack heard him. He always did, through angry, hurtful arguments, or strained and difficult phone calls, or lovemaking  that was hard and sometimes selfish but always, always underwritten by love.

Light tremors were running through Daniel’s body, whether in reaction to revealing his state of mind following the mission or in response to being held this way Jack didn’t know or care.  He simply hauled him closer until they were touching the full length of their bodies.

They knew instinctively how to comfort each other with touch, even when they didn’t know how with words.

Minutes passed, Jack didn’t know how many. And he wouldn’t have cared either, except he couldn’t switch off the internal timer that was counting down their time together. He turned his face into Daniel’s hair, breathed him in. God, he missed this, and he’d never be able to tell Daniel how much.

Daniel shifted in his arms and let out a deeply held breath as the trembling eased. He surrendered totally to the comfort that was Jack. That level of trust pretty much undid Jack every time he experienced it because Daniel didn’t love easily. Jack hugged that depth of feeling to himself. When he was alone in Washington, he allowed it to warm him when his bed and heart were cold.

“Cameras,” Daniel whispered softly.

Jack kissed his hair. “Only ever on in here when the room’s occupied.”

“We’re occupying it,” Daniel said, voice thin with tiredness.

“We’re passing through, not staying.”

Daniel pulled back slowly, still holding Jack at the waist.

“I wish you were staying,” he said, sadly.

“Yeah,” Jack said, the only possible answer to that. He reached out a hand and cupped Daniel’s face, his thumb brushing the soft beard that tantalized with hints of red. Somehow, and Jack wasn’t quite sure how, the beard made him look more vulnerable.

“What’s with the beard?” he asked, enjoying the texture as his thumb ran through the bristles.

Daniel smiled wryly. “Another manifestation of change. Or maybe that beard burn is no longer a day-to-day issue.”

“Looks good. You look good.” He knew his eyes were soft, that everything he was feeling was written all over his face. He didn’t know whether that made it easier on Daniel or not but he couldn’t help himself. “God, you look good.”

Daniel’s eyes suddenly filled. “You too.” And then, hurriedly, as if he had to say it right now and be done, “I don’t want to talk about it. What happened on the mission.  I can’t. There’s too much going on in my head. I need to think, and I’m too tired to think ...”

Jack raised his other hand to cup Daniel’s face and he allowed his fingers the luxury of running over the beard as Daniel nuzzled into the gentle caress.

Daniel’s emotions were running high and close to the surface. Fuck, Jack longed to take him to bed. They didn’t have to make love, just lie there and touch, maybe laugh their way into the physical stuff. They’d done that so often when the pressure of missions gone bad had become too much to bear.

But there was the clock, still running too fast.

Daniel started to say, “And about before. What I said in the mess. I’m so--”

But Jack hushed him with a thumb across his lips. “Don’t . I hate when we fight, but I hate it even more when you apologize for letting what you’re feeling show. You’re scared, and that scares the crap out of me, Daniel, but I’d rather know.” He moved his hands up to cup Daniel’s head, his thumbs smoothing out the creases at the corners of his eyes beneath the frame of his glasses. “I need to know what’s going on in there.”

“Right now, I’m wondering how long we’ve got before you leave.”

Jack closed his eyes and sighed. “Not long enough. I know that. You think I don’t want to stay to help you through this?”

Daniel gave him a wan smile. “You _are_ helping.” He raised his hands and placed them over Jack’s. “ _This_ is helping.  And I’m okay. Really. It’s just ... it’s been hard. I’ve screwed up and ... I miss you being around to _tell_ me that I screwed up but that it’s okay because we’ll make it right.”

“We _will_ make this right,” Jack said forcefully.

Daniel took his hands away and Jack followed his lead, resting them on Daniel’s shoulders. He squeezed gently, adding force to the words. Daniel had to believe they would face this new threat together and win, just as they had faced down every other danger.

“That’s just it, Jack. I don’t know that we _can_ make it right. We’ve unleashed a threat on this galaxy of a kind and intensity we’ve never encountered before. This could be a battle too far. Our luck has to run out sometime.”

The despondency was back and it hurt Jack to hear it. Feeling a need to lighten things, he waved a dismissive hand. “Nope. Don’t wanna hear it. SG-1 has always done a thousand impossible things before breakfast. This is just 1,001.”

Daniel huffed.  “Your faith is gratifying. But things _have_ changed. New threat. New SG-1. No you.”

This time, it was Daniel who reached out and touched Jack’s face, strong fingers tracing the line of his cheekbone, moving him in a way so profound that it took his voice for a moment. He watched Daniel’s face as he touched him; eyes bright, filled with affection and a muted yearning, as though he was trying to hide it because he knew it would make their parting even harder.

 _Don’t hide it, baby. Show me everything. Show me ..._

Daniel’s fingers strayed to his lips, “I’m here,”Jack managed to whisper against those gentle fingers.“Even when I’m not.”

Daniel closed his eyes and nodded.

A knock on the door startled them both. Their gazes found each other and locked.  “Yes,” Jack called, eyes still holding Daniel’s.

Time ticking, ticking ...

“Your pie, Sir,” came through the door.

They both smiled.  

“Leave it outside the door. Thank you, Airman.”

They heard the sound of metal hitting concrete, followed by retreating footsteps.

“You don’t wanna talk now, that’s fine. Promise me, when you’re ready, you’ll speak to someone. Carter or Teal’c or Mitchell if not me.”

Daniel licked his bottom lip. “I promise.”

Jack nodded, satisfied that he’d elicited at least that reassurance.  The relief was huge. “Want some pie?” he asked, as eager to change the subject as he was hungry.

“Only if it’s lemon meringue.”  Daniel sounded more relaxed, the weight of the world perhaps not removed from his shoulders but at least temporarily lifted. A little.

Jack opened the door and picked up the tray. “You’re in luck,” Jack said brightly, proffering the contents in triumph. Two kinds of pie. Bonus.

Daniel walked over to one of the chairs and sat.  Jack sat opposite and passed a dish across.

“Thank you,” Daniel said, and the way he said it told Jack that he wasn’t talking about the pie at all.

“You’re welcome _.” I love you, and I am here. Always._ “And any you don’t want, I’ll finish.”

Daniel smiled and Jack could tell exactly what Daniel was thinking  ... that some things really did never change.

Jack plunged his fork into his apple and pecan.

 

ends


End file.
